[hasugopher]

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which actually brings me to another point that I was going to bring up before you asked this, is there any crime for which a person should be locked up (used loosely- use your imagination) if they have less than a 50% chance of guilt?

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Interesting question. It has to be where protection of society and/or deterrence is of such an overiding objective, as opposed to punishment.

So I'm thinking war-related; spying; treason. Where they can be locked up for a (long) while on 20% suspicion, then tried more thoroughly at a more convenient time.

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Nice work - you've just described the status quo.

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theoretical, independent question (doesn't reflect your thoughts on the 'war on terror', or anything like that)

Say that there's credible intelligence that there is an immanent catastrophic attack in a major city, say NYC, LA, Chicago, whatever. By catastrophic, I mean something that would make 9/11 look like a walk in the park. Something like an NBC attack.

What suspicion or chance of 'guilt' would it be ok to deny somebody of their rights to freedom in this situation?

edit: to clarify, I think it's very unfortunate that the 'war on terror' has been abused like it has. That's a different issue though and one that I don't really want to get into. Hence, independent event.